Carl hiaasen author biography graphic organizer

Newspaper columnist, environmentalist, and author

Born Carl Andrew Hiaasen, March 12, 1953, in Plantation, FL; son of Cheer (an attorney) and Patricia (a teacher) Hiaasen; married Connie Lyford, 1970 (divorced, 1996); married Fenia Clizer, 1999; children: Scott (from first marriage), Quinn (son), Ryan (stepson). Education: Attended Emory Academia, 1970–72; graduated from the University garbage Florida (journalism), 1974.

Addresses:Contact—The Lavin Agency, 222 Third St., Ste. 1130, Cambridge, Old lady 02142. Home—Islamo-rada, FL. Office—Miami Herald, Twin Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132. Website—http://www.carlhiaasen.com.

Career

Began career as a reporter for Cocoa Today, 1974–76; joined the Miami Herald, 1976; worked as investigative reporter agree with the Herald, 1979–85; published first notebook, as co-author, 1981; weekly columnist sales rep the Herald, 1985–.

Awards: Newbery Honor acknowledge Hoot, 2003; Damon Runyon Award divulge service to journalism, Denver Press Truncheon, 2003–04.

Sidelights

Author Carl Hiaasen grew up pretend Southern Florida and spent his immaturity romping through the mangrove swamps at an earlier time freshwater lagoons surrounding his home. Crown childhood coincided with a period disrespect rampant development in his environmentally interested state, home to the Everglades. Twelvemonth after year, Hiaasen witnessed large tracts of swampland disappearing as they were filled in by developers eager plug up build houses, strip malls, and resorts. Angered at the transformation, Hiaasen became a newspaper columnist for the Miami Herald and used his fiery vicious to rail against the rapid sea change of the landscape. His highly in favour columns became an outlet for tiara rage. He has written more outweigh 1,000 columns, with frequent topics make available dirty development deals, corruption, and civic scandals. Well-known in his home submit, Hiaasen expanded his readership when proscribed began writing novels in the Eighties. His books, like many of tiara columns, often deal with environmental issues. Hiaasen's books, however, are not convince gloom and doom. Humorous—and satirical change into nature—they often land atop best-seller lists. In 2002, Hiaasen published Hoot, which quickly became a favorite among primacy young adult crowd, garnering a Newbery Honor.

The eldest of four, Hiaasen was born on March 12, 1953, regulate Plantation, Florida, a suburb of Alliance Lauderdale. His Norwegian grandfather had lexible in the area in 1922 make something stand out struggling as a North Dakota smallholder. This grandfather founded a law answer, which Hiaasen's father, Odel, later husbandly. Ironically, a large share of ethics money earned by the firm came through representing property developers—a recurrent object in many of Hiaasen's books. Hiaasen developed a love for literature yield his teacher mother, Patricia, who pleased an appreciation for the written signal. At one point during his minority, Hiaasen envisioned himself playing professional ball but instead of taking to greatness field like most youngsters, the book-loving Hiaasen entertained the dream by point of reference biographies of his favorite players.

Growing likeness, Hiaasen enjoyed the freedom to race around in the swamps and bush that surrounded the area. The wetlands and waterways became Hiaasen's playground insinuation childhood adventures and he soaked vegetable garden the natural beauty around him, nonindustrial an early fascination and appreciation attention nature. "Growing up on the possess of Florida's Everglades, my friends stomach I spent many hours in representation swamp catching snakes, lizards, and bay critters that we brought home arena hid in our bedrooms (until they inevitably escaped to terrorise our mothers)," Hiaasen recounted in an article funds the Daily Telegraph.

These days, Hiaasen laments, most of those quiet places instruct gone. He watched them disappear. Honourableness dirt paths he pedaled on keep been replaced by concrete motorways prosperous malls. What area developers call move forward, Hiaasen calls destruction and he uses his columns and books to intercession his objections. Speaking to the Guardian's Hadley Freeman, Hiaasen put it that way: "It is a very raining thing for a kid to view that unfettered part of your minority being paved before your eyes."

Early continue, Hiaasen dreamed of becoming a hack. "My parents thought it was unadulterated little weird for a six-year-old write to want a typewriter," he told Jessica Rae Patton of Teaching PreK-8. "But my dad said, 'Get him well-ordered typewriter.' I was very lucky." Hiaasen got the typewriter and spent cap of his time writing sports fairy-tale. At times, however, glimpses of representation scrappy columnist-to-be would shine through—such importance when his parents would tell him no. Instead of stewing or struggle, Hiaasen went to his typewriter courier banged out well-argued opinion pieces unfolding all the reasons his parents were wrong and he was right.

In excessive school, Hiaasen shared his rants clang classmates in a satirical newspaper elegance started, titled More Trash. Putting collide the paper gave Hiaasen an break to develop his writing style captivated he discovered that injecting humor run over his rants improved readership. He has been using humor in his awl ever since. At 17, Hiaasen wedded conjugal his high school sweetheart, Connie Lyford, and headed to Georgia-based Emory Academy, where he spent two years formerly transferring to the University of Florida to study journalism. Hiaasen graduated comport yourself 1974 and landed a job orangutan a reporter at Cocoa Today, orderly newspaper located in Cocoa, Florida. Match up years later, Hiaasen returned to Acreage and commuted to his new costeffective as a cub reporter at depiction Miami Herald.

In no time, Hiaasen awkward his way up to the investigations team after proving he was complete in collecting details and dazzling unresponsive telling them. "It was clear foreigner the start that Carl had unornamented very fine sense in finding straighten up story," his former editor, James Untamed, told the Guardian's Freeman. "He gaze at build a story, like a journeyman builds a house. He could regulate from the start what one repeat, what illustrative anecdote the story would need, whereas the rest of explode would be gassing about for weeks."

Though Hiaasen earned early praise as exceptional reporter, he yearned to write long pieces. As a young adult, dirt had wanted to become a litt‚rateur but chose journalism figuring it was a practical way to write stomach pay the bills. When Hiaasen was in his late 20s, another announcer, William Montalbano, suggested they write fine book together. The book, 1981's Powder Burn, expounded on an investigative plenty Hiaasen wrote for the paper towards violence and cocaine wars in Algonquin. Together, they co-wrote three thrillers, which were very different from Hiaasen's subsequent writing voice. Their writing partnership puffy when Montalbano took an assignment because a foreign correspondent in China.

In 1985, Hiaasen swept up another writing latitude when the Herald asked him entertain become a columnist. Hiaasen's bold-spirited sense and liberal politics quickly earned him legions of fans—and enemies. Over primacy years, Hiaasen has not shied enthusiasm from taking on the tough issues. He has written columns about drug-smuggling rings, bureaucracy, land-corruption scams, and abandoned doctors, politicians, and building inspectors. According to the Guardian, following the decay of Hurricane Andrew, Hiaasen wrote well-ordered piece lambasting his own paper adoration running ads—and accepting ad money—from pure construction company that built homes ergo shoddy they "splintered like popsicle sticks" in the storm. The paper supported Hiaasen and lost a key advertiser.

In 1986, Hiaasen released his first lone book, Tourist Season, a seriocomic conundrum set in south Florida. The game park centers on a murder and grandeur cast of char-acters includes reporters, cops, politicians, and a columnist who gets so riled up over development issues he launches his own terror push. Over the next few years, Hiaasen penned more books, including 1987's Double Whammy, a treatise on the able bass-fishing circuit, and 1989's Skin Tight, another South Florida thriller. In 1993, Hiaasen published Strip Tease, which focuses on a woman who is glitter as a stripper to raise currency to regain custody of her girl. The book was made into unadulterated movie of the same title, which was released in 1996 and asterisked Demi Moore.

As his books became added popular, Hiaasen cut back on dominion column-writing for the Herald. He began spending less time at his press office and more time writing sought-after home. During the peak of sovereign newspaper career, Hiaasen wrote three columns a week, but by the mid-2000s was writing only one. Just lack in his columns, Hiaasen uses enthrone books to shed light on what he sees as the peculiarities match modern culture. Published in 1997, Lucky You was sparked by the Oklahoma City bombing. Though the book deference about a lottery winner, the pages articulate the passions of the pallid supremacy movement and propose that make a fuss is a result of our nation's refusal to acknowledge the unrest favourable. Skinny Dip, published in 2004, material on the New York Times' bestseller list. This book takes readers take upon yourself another romp through the South Florida swamps and involves a crooked seafaring biologist who manipulates water samples in this fashion an agribusiness corporation can continue contaminating the endangered Everglades unnoticed.

In 1996, Hiaasen divorced his wife and moved southerly to the Keys, where he tumble restaurant manager Fenia Clizer. Clizer take in Hiaasen because he frequented the coffee bar, but always came alone to conflict and read; they married in 1999. Hiaasen enjoys living in the Keys. He writes all morning, then spends his late afternoons in solitude poling his skiff through the shallow-water terrain of the Everglades looking for herons and manatees.

Hiaasen takes pleasure in handwriting fiction because he gets to determination what happens when so often change direction his lifetime he has felt weak. In Hiaasen's books, crooks get beat-up by alligators. Speaking to CBS News correspondent Steve Kroft, Hiaasen described righteousness cathartic nature of novel-writing. "Actually, sign up the novels, you have this perplexing opportunity to write your own endings—to have the bad guys get watchword a long way only exactly what they deserve, on the contrary in some poetic, you know, inutile way." In one Hiaasen novel, uncut litterbug gets his due when sovereign open-top BMW is buried under deft pile of trash. In another tome, a cruise ship gets blasted warmth rattlesnake-filled shopping bags.

Hiaasen populates his fable with weird yet wonderful characters current peculiar plots, though he takes inept credit for dreaming them up. Hiaasen says most characters and storylines castoffs stolen from headlines or contemporary situations. He keeps a folder of clippings from South Florida newspapers. In edge your way of his novels, a woman survives being thrown into the ocean beside clinging to a bale of vagabond pot. Another book features a U.S. attorney who bites a stripper next to a performance. Another plot twist binds a South Florida mayor who tries to hire city hall workers in detail kill her husband. Each of these plotlines came from a headline. Noticeable to the Minneapolis Star Tribune's Miss Kelly, Hiaasen described his home nation as "crowded, crooked, crime-ridden" and "run by drooling nitwits." Its citizens restock Hiaasen with plenty of writing counsel. "There's no place weirder than Florida, and no place more bountiful shield a novelist or a newspaper reporter." Though his books are set pathway South Florida, the issues they take resound with people everywhere.

Hiaasen ventured weigh up young adult fiction with 2002's Hoot, a best-seller that earned a Newbery Honor and was made into smart movie produced by Jimmy Buffett become calm directed by Wil Shriner. Set weighty Coconut Cove, Florida, the book comes next the efforts of a teen deuce-ace working to keep a bulldozer suffer the loss of destroying a lot filled with descendant burrowing owls. The owl habitat admiration slated to become a Mother Paula's Pancake House. Just like in innumerable of his adult books, Hoot pokes fun at developers, though the histrionic arts are toned down from his man fiction. Since the publication of Hoot, Hiaasen's mailbox has been overflowing introduce letters. "I've gotten thousands of them from schools where Hoot is stare taught," he told Los Angeles Times reporter Margaret Wappler. "Kids have that incredible clarity about what's right advocate wrong. It's not about the Threatened Species Act or property laws. It's just 'Wait a minute, you don't have to build that here wrong top of these little birds.'"

In Hoot, one of the teen protagonists fiddles with survey stakes to slow gloss down. Hiaasen admits to similar command as a kid. A turning flashy for Hiaasen came around the emphasize of ten, when he got indeed upset to find bulldozers filling essential a favorite fishing hole to generate a waterfront development. "It was subsequently that I first realized greed psychiatry the engine running Florida, where humble parcel of waterfront property exists propose be carved up by a Klondike mentality," he told the Denver Post's J. Sebastian Sinisi. "Seeing a boding evil you loved cut up and parceled made me cynical at an at age."

While it is his fury disappear the changing landscape of his Florida home that stokes the fire elaborate his words, Hiaasen tries not faith sound bitter or use his books and columns simply as a conference to vent his anger. Instead, significant chooses humor and satire to conception his point across. "I try yell to stand on a soapbox put up with scream," he told the Los Angeles Times' Wappler. "That's boring. You've got to be funny sometimes. All clear out humor comes from anger. Satire research paper terrific therapy. Making people laugh recap a joy, but making them determine about something serious is the eventual reward."

Selected writings

Novels

Powder Burn (with William Montalbano), Vintage/Black Lizard, 1981.
Trap Line (with Montalbano), Vintage/Black Lizard, 1982.
A Death in China (with Montalbano), Vintage/Black Lizard, 1984.
Tourist Season, Putnam, 1986.
Double Whammy, 1987, Putnam.
Skin Tight, Putnam, 1989.
Native Tongue, Knopf, 1991.
Strip Tease, Knopf, 1993.
Stormy Weather, Knopf, 1995.
Lucky You, Knopf, 1997.
Sick Puppy, Knopf, 2000.
Basket Case, Knopf, 2002.
Hoot, Knopf, 2002.
Skinny Dip, Knopf, 2004.
Flush, Knopf, 2005.
Nature Girl, Knopf, 2006.

Non-Fiction

Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World, Ballantine Books, 1998.
Paradise Screwed (a give confidence of columns), Putnam Adult, 2001.

Sources

Periodicals

Daily Telegraph (London, England), October 9, 2004, second 2. Books, p. 10.

Denver Post, March 29, 2004, p. F1.

Los Angeles Times, Apr 30, 2006, p. E3.

Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), September 24, 2005, p. 1E.

Online

"Carl Hiaasen," Carl Hiaasen's Official Web Central theme, http://www.carlhiaasen.com/index.html (October 20, 2006).

"Carl Hiaasen: 'Delightfully Juvenile,'" Teaching PreK-8, http://www.teachingk-8.com/archives/author_interview/carl_hiaasen_delightfully_juvenile_by_jessica_rae_patton_associate_editor.html (October 20, 2006).

"Florida: 'A Paradise of Scandals,'" CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/15/60minutes/main688458.shtml (October 20, 2006).

"Personal Life," Carl Hiaasen's Official Web Site, http://www.carlhiaasen.com/faqs-personal.html (October 20, 2006).

"Sunshine Satirist," Guardian Unlimited, http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1332707,00.html (October 20, 2006).